Bill Nye: Deflecting Asteroids Is Hard, But Not <em>That</em> Hard

America's favorite bow-tied Science Guy writes off Mars colonization, explains the science behind asteroid detection, and describes how researchers are working to ensure we don't go the way of the dinosaurs.

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"Bill Nye? You mean the Science Guy? The descriptor inherently follows his name like "The Vampire Slayer" trails "Buffy."

After all, Nye earned notoriety by starring in the eponymous TV program that taught preteens that for their size and weight, grasshoppers make the loudest sound of any animal, and that Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons with a telescope about as powerful as a pair of modern binoculars.

But what has Nye been up to since his Daytime Emmy Award-winning show ended in 1998? What hasn't he been up to. He has continued to teach science through entertainment by serving as the technical expert in BattleBots (R.I.P.), investigating political hot topics like climate change and GMOs on The Eyes of Nye, and counseling contestants on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as part of the "Ask an Expert" lifeline. He's taken to the Internet to warn about the dangers of teaching creationism to children, developed the MarsDial incorporated on Mars rovers, and regularly appears on the news to discuss hot science issues.

More recently, Nye released an app with Disney that lets kids watch old Science Guy episodes, try DIY science experiments, and play games. Why an app? In his best geezer voice Nye explains, "We're going to the kids, where the kids are! The kids, the kids these days with their electric computer machines, they're on the Interweb!" Kids have always been interested in science, he argues, but as a society we must address the problem of keeping themespecially girlsinterested. He hopes his app will help.

Today Nye also serves as the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest organization "promoting space exploration for the betterment of humankind," he says. Besides building a spacecraft that sails on sunlight and looking for life beyond Earth, "we work to keep the Earth from getting hit by an asteroid," says Nye. Many laugh when they hear this, "but if we got hit with an asteroid, that's it, people! It's like wiping your iPhone, erasing all the information in an instant," he says. "And just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it's not catastrophic. The probability does not correspond to the consequence."

PCMag managed to nail down the frenetic bow-tied Science Guy to talk about Mars exploration, asteroid detection, and the amazing ways researchers are working to ensure humans don't go the way of the dinosaurs.

Bill Nye: Mars exploration is one thing; colonization is something else. See humans, as far as we know, are the best explorers we have. What a human geologist can do in about a minute takes our very, very best rover drivers with our very best rovers under the very best conditions about a week. So if you really had something extraordinary to look for, human explorers would be the most efficient way to do it.

Then, efficiency aside, there's the adventure! When you go exploring, there are two things that always happen. You'll make discoveries and you'll have an adventure. If humans were on Mars, the world would be engaged on a level that's almost hard to imagine. For national aggrandizement or proving you're better than anyone else, nothing would beat a trip to Mars.

Colonization is a whole 'nother thing, in my view. To the people who want to colonize Mars, I say, go to Antarctica for a couple years. Don't go to where the ice sheet meets the sea and where there are penguins and petrels and orcas and seals and all this great stuffgo where it hasn't rained or snowed for a century or more and see what you think. In the summer day it might be -15°C; it's just cold all the time. And by the way, when you do that, you'll be coasting because you can breathe! On Mars you can't even breathe.

So colonization is an extraordinary idea. Now I understand the argument "what if Earth becomes uninhabitable?"which would largely be our fault, I guessbut it has to be uninhabitable at a level that we aren't even close to yet. We all grew up with science fiction and it's great fun to imagine going and living there, but it's a really, really difficult thing.

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About the Author

Meredith Popolo joined the staff shortly after graduating from snowy Syracuse University, where she earned degrees in magazine journalism and entrepreneurship. So far, the highlight of her PCMag career has been covering the Mars Curiosity rover landing from NASA's JPL in Pasadena, California. When she's not writing about tech, tweeting about Syracu... See Full Bio

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